After discussing sexual assault, the characteristics of victims, the perpetrators, where these assaults are most likely to occur, leads me to this last blog post... The sharing of personal sexual assault stories from various individuals, in both similar and different situations.
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June 12th, 2015-
The Washington Post recently published an article expressing sexual assault stories from people all around the world, allowing for these victims to speak out and share their experiences. The Washington Post and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation partnered up together to conduct a poll, a sample of 1,053 nationwide individuals who had attended college within the last four years.
Below are six stories that reveal victims and their past with sexual assault....
#1.)
#2.)
A 25-year-old woman recalled a date in her freshman year with a classmate at the University of Pittsburgh. They went to a friend’s house. He handed her a drink. It might have been a juiced vodka. A very strong one.
“I woke up the next morning without any pants on,” the woman said, “and without any recollection.” A few weeks later, she said, the man “made a comment about wanting to see me again and do what he did before. It led me to believe we had some sort of sexual contact.”
If so, the woman said, it was without her consent; she was incapacitated.
“I was in no state of mind” to say yes to sex, she said. “The memory is so, so foggy.”
#3.)
Katherine Bowman often crashed with one of her closest friends at his place, sleeping in his bed without worry. She was sure it was clear that they were just friends, but that changed one night during her sophomore year at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
She went home with her friend after drinking, got sick and passed out. She awoke at 4 a.m. in a haze, her pants off and her friend touching her. “He was orally assaulting me,” Bowman said. “I don’t know how else to put it.”
She jumped up, pulled her clothes on and went home, she said. She was angry. She hadn’t been given a chance to consent, and her intoxication had not been an invitation for sex. She ended the friendship and felt her trust in other male friends evaporate.
“That night it was just poor decisions,” said Sarah Honos, a student at Eastern Michigan University, who got separated from friends after a night of drinking in New York City. They were headed back to their hotel in New Jersey when she got off the subway and realized, standing on the platform, that it was the wrong stop.
Her cellphone was in a friend’s purse. Honos said she remembers asking dozens of people to direct her to the Port Authority, until a man said he was going there and could show her the way.
When the bus they were on crossed the Hudson River, she started to worry. When they got off the bus, he led her into a liquor store and into the bathroom, pressed her up against a wall and raped her, she said.
She spent the rest of the night terrified, walking through the dark, asking for help and finding none. “I take it as a lesson of humanity,” she said. “No one would help me.”
She never told anyone what happened until she was contacted by The Post.
#6.)
A 21-year-old at a public university in the Southeast who participated in the poll said she was raped by a male student who escorted her out of a nightclub after she suddenly became woozy and separated from a group of friends. Someone, she suspects, had slipped a drug into her rum drink.
“In the morning, I woke up and my lip was so swollen,” the woman said. “I just remember sobbing and sobbing and sobbing the next day. You learn a lot of lessons.”
Twenty percent of women and 5 percent of men
reported being sexually assaulted either by
physical force or while incapacitated.
Another man, a student at a South Carolina school, went to talk with his ex-girlfriend on her campus after their breakup. He thought it was just a talk. But in her dorm room — where he thought her roommate would be — she forced him into sex.
“I was raped,” he said, noting that he tried to resist, but she seemed not to notice. “It’s hard to speak when you’re in physical pain.”
He felt horrified, ashamed and betrayed, and he later had nightmares and flashbacks.
Like the other men who spoke to The Post, he didn’t report the incident — or even seriously consider reporting it.
(Washington Post).
Last Thoughts:
The stories mentioned from the Washington Post are brief and only describe the experiences from past college students. It's important to bring awareness to sexual assault and all of the possibilities that can be considered a sexual assault. A reason why many victims refuse to come forward is because they are confused about their experience and what will be the consequences if they do speak out? If not reported or punished, there is a strong chance that a perpetrator will perform another act of sexual assault. Individuals must be cautious of their surroundings and, especially in college, always stay close by your group of friends. Regardless of the victims (whether a child, wife, student, teacher or a military member) it's necessary to make them feel comfortable and safe, allowing for these victims to open up and share their stories, in hopes of making other individuals aware and unlikely to find themselves in a sexual assault.
References:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2015/06/12/1-in-5-women-say-they-were-violated/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2015/06/12/sex-assault-during-college-is-common-and-life-altering/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/male-victims-often-fear-they-wont-be-taken-seriously/2015/06/12/e780794a-f8fe-11e4-9030-b4732caefe81_story.html
